by Edie Claire
And yet, what could Wolf do? Nothing, that’s what. Bear wasn’t a baby anymore; he made his own decisions. Never mind all the crap they’d gone through together — Bear didn’t even seem to remember that. He’d run right out and made friends with Frieda, despite all Wolf’s warnings. The damage was already done.
“Whatever, Dad,” Wolf forced out, avoiding further eye contact. “I hope you’re happy.”
Nels blew out a frustrated breath. “I will be, Wolf,” he said uncertainly.
Wolf’s eyes darted back to his father’s, despite himself. There was a “but” somewhere in that statement.
“I want you to be happy too, son,” Nels continued.
Wolf thought about that a moment. Then he smiled sadly, knowing the statement was heartfelt. If only his dad could see the truth. Wolf might only be fifteen, but he had a better understanding of women than his father would ever have. “Don’t worry about me, Dad,” he said confidently, getting up again. “I’ll be fine.”
Chapter 26
Maui, Hawaii 2016
Ri’s heart felt wonderfully light. She laughed out loud as the brisk winds of Ma'alaea Bay grabbed hold of Wolf’s shaggy locks and battered him about the face. “Want to borrow a headband?” she teased. “I always carry an extra.”
He grinned back at her, wincing as a gale from the side caused a fierce attack on his left eye. He swore and attempted again to stuff all his longish hair up under his cap. But the wind was having none of it. In a matter of seconds, the whole hat came off his head and he only barely managed to recapture it before it flew off over the Pacific.
Ri laughed until her sides ached.
“Hey, I made that save left-handed!” he admonished.
Ri could hardly believe her good fortune. Their conversation on the beach last night had left them at a seeming stalemate, and she’d been afraid that Wolf would take off as soon as their work was done today. She’d tossed and turned all night wondering whether the appeal of her company alone would be enough to overcome his frustrations with her. Either it was or it wasn’t — that was the crux of the matter. She had no desire to “win” any man by being scheming or manipulative, no matter how good she believed they could be together. There would be no bait and switch, no allowing him to believe she was okay with “casual” only to trap him into something more. Ri allowed herself only one point of orchestration where Wolf was concerned, and that was trying to maximize the amount of time they had to spend together before he left Maui. Beyond that, she was committed to letting nature take its course.
Even if it meant her heart would take a battering in the process. Last night had been her second swing and a miss, and it had hurt like hell. She’d been honest, as she promised herself she would be. She’d told him flat out how she felt and what she wanted. And what had he said? He’d said, “What’s the point?”
Ouch.
He still didn’t see what she saw. He already knew, because she had told him before, that she was free to move anywhere after the end of August. But that factoid still meant nothing to him. While Ri’s fanciful brain had started spinning happily-ever-after scenarios three seconds into their acquaintance, Wolf’s disabled neurons still hadn’t gone there, and Ri could get seriously depressed about that. But difficult as it was not to take the snub personally, she had made the decision to do just that. Whatever the source of his mental block, it had clearly preceded her. No other woman might have managed to conquer it yet, but no other woman was Sriha Mirini Sullivan.
She was making progress. Wolf’s brain might still not be able to envision a future that included her, but his heart could not entirely resist her, either. He was smiling at her right this second, admitting defeat as he held his hat in his hands and let the wind whip his hair wildly about his face. And he was here because he wanted to be — no “orchestration” necessary. He had mentioned himself, over their brief lunch break and mid-day hangout with Bella, that one thing he regretted about his time on Maui was that he had never managed to get out on a whale-watching tour.
Now seriously, Ri wondered with glee, how did he think she would respond to that?
“Here,” she said with a chuckle, pulling down her ponytail and handing him the tie. “Try this. Then put it up under your hat.”
He looked at her skeptically, but took both the hair tie and the suggestion. “I guess it would be nice to actually see the dolphins,” he joked.
Ri pulled her extra headband out of her pack and wound it around her own hair. Just as she finished with a funky improvised bun, her eyes widened and she pointed starboard. A two-toned dolphin with a dark gray cape had burst out of the water in a spectacular leap. “Look! A spotted! Yes! Finally!”
Wolf looked and laughed with pleasure right along with her as a pod of dolphins performed several more impressive acrobatics. The two-hour cruise was standard tourist fare rather than a research trip, but Ri was delighted that Wolf got to see a breaching humpback as well as two different species of dolphins. He told her about wildlife-watching cruises he’d been on in Alaska, and she mentioned — as she would have anyway — how much she hoped to see an arctic Beluga whale someday. He asked her intelligent questions about the Hawaiian marine life they encountered and she was thrilled to answer, even as they both ignored the highly competent commentary already offered through the PA system. The late afternoon winds were strong and the waters so choppy that several passengers got seasick, but for Ri the time flew by in a haze of bliss. She was in a good mood and Wolf was in a good mood and they always had fun when they were together… and for the moment that was all she wanted to think about.
“Would you mind if we drop by my office?” she asked when they disembarked at the marina. “It’s still a mess, I’m sure, but I’d like to see how the cleanup is coming along. And maybe check in with Lachland, if he’s around.”
Wolf shrugged amicably. He had pulled the hair tie out the moment the boat slowed down outside the harbor, which didn’t surprise Ri. Even wearing shorts and sandals instead of his regular work boots seemed to put the mountain man slightly off his game. Ri loved it when he showed more skin, but she couldn’t help but chuckle to notice how pale his feet were compared to his darkly tanned arms.
Ri led Wolf through the Foundation building and down a musty-smelling hallway into the research team’s computer lab. Or rather, what had been their computer lab. It was now a square room full of jumbled junk. Most of the electronics and furniture were gone. The desks were still in place, but they’d been made of particle board, and their bottoms were bloated and warped. Their desktops were completely covered by cardboard boxes overflowing with office supplies, and the whole place smelled like a locker room at a pool, minus the chlorine.
“It was slightly more impressive before the flood,” Ri explained.
Wolf had no chance to reply. Lachland walked through the door with a start, clearly surprised to find anyone there. “Ri,” he said, catching his breath.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. She introduced the two men, who exchanged a nod and a handshake. “We just got back from a dolphin tour, and I wanted to see how the recovery effort was going. Are you sure you can’t use any of the interns’ help with this?”
Lachland’s eyes flashed with an aggrieved expression Ri didn’t understand. “No, thank you,” he said heavily.
Ri suspected that something else was wrong. Something new. She debated whether she should ask him about it and decided probably not. Her day was going entirely too well to spoil now. “Well, if you’re sure we can’t help,” she repeated, keeping her voice cheerful. “Should I plan on coming in Monday, or would you rather I call to check first?”
Lachland’s keen gaze studied her a moment. His eyes looked bloodshot. The last time he’d looked like that, he’d gotten no sleep the night before. “Listen, Ri,” he began with a sigh, his shoulders slumping. “I was going to call you later, but since you’re here, I might as well get it over with.”
Ri’s blood froze. He could not be cancellin
g her internship. He could not! She felt her knees weaken beneath her.
“You know that joke I made about disasters coming in threes?” Lachland asked.
This could not be happening. Ri had waited too long, saved too long. No, no, no. She tried to control her nerves but she could feel her limbs trembling. In her peripheral vision, she saw Wolf move closer to her side. He made no attempt to touch her, but she could feel his warmth radiating towards her just the same.
“Will and Bryant took the rental car out for a little joyride last night and wound up in a fender bender,” Lachland announced. “Nobody was hurt, but there was significant damage to the rental and a parked car, too. Both guys were drunk. Will’s been arrested on a DUI. They’ve both been suspended from the program.”
Ri stopped breathing for a moment. Then she snapped out of it and shook her head. “Wait, what? Will… and Bryant…”
“Immature reprobates,” Lachland muttered. “Or rather, one of each, respectively.” He looked at her and cleared his throat. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No,” Ri replied weakly, “I’d say one of each is accurate. But what does… I mean, what does this mean for me?”
Lachland looked confused. But then he stepped toward Ri with a smile. “Nothing!” he insisted. “Your internship will go on as planned, of course. Don’t worry about that!”
Ri’s breath let out with a whoosh. “Thank goodness,” she gushed. “I just thought, with three out of four missing in action—”
“Good God, no!” Lachland declared. Then he threw back his head and laughed ruefully. “I swear, Ri, if it hadn’t been for you, I would have cancelled the whole damn thing before orientation was out.”
Ri’s heart thumped painfully. “What?”
He shook his head. “I swore I’d never tell anybody this. But I don’t want you to think we don’t have great interns here. We usually do, because I pick the best. But unfortunately, I procrastinate. This spring I put it off till the last minute, then wound up with a GI virus so bad I— Well, it was bad. I went back to work the next week only to find out that Trish had ‘taken care of it’ for me.” His eyes rolled. “I don’t know if she threw darts at the applications or just called the first four she picked up, but she couldn’t have done a worse job if she’d been blindfolded.”
Ri felt like crumpling, but Wolf’s solid presence bucked her up, even without a touch.
“She did get one out of four right,” Lachland added quickly. “I was going to pick you anyway, Ri. I swear. Your application was at the top of the stack. So I certainly hope you’ll stay on, even though when we finally get up and running again, you may be a bit busier than you expected.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Ri answered honestly. “I can’t wait. Thank you.”
They said their goodbyes, and Ri led Wolf back to the truck in silent contemplation, her mood brightening with every step. Although it was a shame that Will’s internship had come to such an unfortunate end, he had brought it on himself, and Bryant was equally complicit in the deed. Both had shown such blatant disregard for Lachland’s generosity, she found it difficult to feel sorry for either of them. What mattered was that no one had been injured in the debacle and that her own internship was safe. She felt gratified that Lachland thought that she was doing a good job and wanted her to continue. She believed him when he said she’d been his first choice. But most encouraging of all, when her fear of bad news had made her genuinely upset, what had Wolf done? He had picked up on her distress and acted protectively toward her. And he probably didn’t even realize he’d done it.
Now that was something worth smiling about.
“So, dinner back at the Hilton?” Wolf asked uncertainly as they stepped up into the truck. He was probably getting hungry, and he knew that Ri couldn’t afford to eat out.
She hesitated. “Actually, we have another option.” She’d been debating with herself all afternoon over how to bring up the issue. Kai had texted her earlier in the day saying that he had some information about Filipino relatives he wanted to share with her. He’d made clear that it was nothing particularly exciting, but that he did want to talk to her in person. He’d invited her to dinner at his new apartment with himself and Maddie, and Ri had very much wanted to join them. But she didn’t want to give up an evening with Wolf to do it. Luckily for her, Kai had made an alternative suggestion.
“Kai has something he wants to tell me, and he’s invited both of us to come over and have some noodles or something. Maddie will be there, too. You want to go? We don’t have to stay long.”
Wolf shrugged again. “Sure,” he agreed. “Sounds like fun.”
“Great! Thanks,” Ri said with astonishment. Her pulse pounded with excitement, even as she warned herself not to read too much into his response. She didn’t know what to expect from him, but after the emotional ups and downs of last evening, he did seem surprisingly placid. He wasn’t pressing her, but nor was he actively resisting her.
She wished she knew what he was thinking.
***
Wolf had no idea what he was thinking. He had no idea why he was sitting at a kitchen table in Kai Nakama’s apartment eating some weird spaghetti dish made with spam and cheese and talking and laughing and acting like he and Ri were on a double date with an engaged couple. The optics were like some kind of bizarre greeting card. First, because the picture of mundane domesticity was everything he did not want to be accidentally, circumstantially associated with, because it gave all the wrong impressions about what he was doing with Ri and what he wanted for his own life. And second, because no matter how much he enjoyed Ri’s company in the platonic sense, any man who would choose to spend all day admiring such a hot little body when he knew his prospects were nil was a masochistic idiot.
Much to his surprise, he was having a great time anyway.
Hanging with Kai and Maddie together was usually a downer, but the dynamic was different with Ri around, and he found that he’d missed the simple pleasure of having a family-type dinner in a regular home. He especially enjoyed getting a chance to talk with Kai when the women were otherwise occupied. At the field station Maddie was always hanging all over the man, and her presence tended to be overpowering. But by the end of dinner Wolf could see that his positive impressions of the mild-mannered lawyer were justified. Not only was the Lana'ian smart, honest, and blessed with a good sense of humor, the firm he worked for was currently engaged in a legal battle to get the air pollution cleaned up in Fairbanks — a subject which happened to be near and dear to Wolf’s lungs.
He also couldn’t help noticing that Kai was happy. Not just upbeat, like some people are by nature. The man sitting across from Wolf sipping at a generic root beer was fully, deeply, genuinely, ecstatically, content with his life. And as much as Wolf would like to write that off as a byproduct of sleeping in the same bed as a woman like Maddie, he knew that would be naive. There was obviously more to it.
Good for them.
“Okay, Kai,” Ri said, breaking into Wolf’s thoughts as she bounced a little in her chair and drummed her palms on the table. “You’ve kept me in suspense long enough. What is it you want to tell me?”
Kai smiled at her. “Like I said, it’s nothing to get excited about,” he explained gently. “But Nana”— he threw an apologetic glance at Wolf— “that’s my grandmother on Lana'i, was very interested in your story, and she made some phone calls.”
Ri’s eyes lit up. Wolf watched as a smile brightened the angel face he’d become so familiar with. In a few short days, he’d memorized its every feature. She was so proud of her Filipino heritage. So glad to know anything about her biological background. And yet it occurred to him that he’d never once heard her talk about wanting to find her actual birthparents. Was that a secret wish?
“Nana was pretty sure we had some relatives who were into genealogy,” Kai continued. “So she decided to give them a call. Turns out she found two who’d done the ancestry DNA testing.”
&nb
sp; Ri sat up, and her arm pressed against Wolf’s. Her touch affected him so strongly he nearly groaned aloud, but with an effort he managed to stifle both the sound and the urge to recoil in self-defense. This wasn’t about him. She probably didn’t even notice. “And?” she asked.
“One was the daughter of a cousin of hers on the Big Island,” Kai answered. “They’re related through Nana’s father, who came to Lana'i from the Philippines after World War II. That woman checked the database, but although I showed up as a relative match, you did not. And yes, I gave her the ID you used.”
“Which proves we’re not related through that particular ancestor,” Ri stated.
“Right,” Kai agreed. “The other relative who tested was a direct descendant of Nana’s, a cousin of mine from right here on Maui. She found the same thing, I’m afraid. I was a match, but you were not.”
Wolf could feel Ri deflating beside him. She was upset. He watched like an innocent bystander as his arm reached out and hugged her around the shoulders.
Dammit! Why had he done that? He hadn’t thought. He was sending messages she would misinterpret. Besides which, he was torturing himself. But as Ri melted into his side, he had to acknowledge that the feel of her warm body against his wasn’t all torture.
“There is still another possibility, though,” Kai said, his voice encouraging. “You and I could be related through my grandfather, Nana’s husband. He was second-generation Lana'ian, mixed Filipino and Puerto Rican. Nana said that three of his grandparents were born in the Philippines. Our common ancestor could be a few generations above any of those people. It’s still completely possible.”
“Of course. I see,” Ri said, seeming more chipper again. Gradually, Wolf forced himself to ease down his arm, then remove it. He caught a quick dart of Ri’s eyes toward him. She had definitely noticed. She hadn’t seemed to mind him putting his arm around her, but she didn’t care for his taking it away. She was sending that signal again.